The Data Stack Show - The PRQL: Is Kostas an Excel Power User Yes/No?

Episode Date: January 14, 2022

Eric and Kostas preview the upcoming conversation with Jimmy Chan of Dropbase.

Welcome to the Data Stack Show prequel. We just recorded a fascinating episode with Jimmy from Dropbase, and they provide a tool that allows you to ingest data and its database included. So interesting. We haven't talked about this concept on the show before. Costas, as a preview to our conversation, have you ever built something in a spreadsheet or a Google sheet that you would consider software? And I know that brings up a lot of other questions, but this came up on the show that we just recorded. And I think it's pretty interesting and you had some interesting

thoughts about it. No, I haven but i'm i'm one of the worst excel users out there i have no idea how to use it like outside of like copy pasting values like on the sheets i mean if i want to do something more complex than that and like don't take this wrong but like probably i would just like export in the csv put it in a database and just like run queries there, which I know like it's stupid, right? Like I shouldn't be doing that, but just like, I don't want to, I mean, I think it's like a human tendency, right? Like my comfort zone is like with different tools

and sometimes I just like over-engineer stuff. I never really learned to use Excel and I think that it's like a kind of handicap, to be honest, like i'm not like proud of this like it's a very very how to say that useful technology and i would say that it's one of like the major forces that democratize technology like if you think of like how many people of how many generations are interacting with the machines that we build through excel that's crazy like i'll i'll i'll tell you a story i was thinking

about that when we were discussing with jimmy so my mother okay like she grew up in greece she studied mathematics and the first contact that she had with computers was at the university in late 70s, beginning of 80s, where they had like these, you know, systems where you had to punch the cards and insert like the cards. Like giant vacuum tubes in the computer. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That was like her experience with computers, right? So after probably like 15 years or maybe more that she was working at the Greek postal office, without any kind of like contact with technology, she had to start using computers.

And at some point, because my mother at some point was like responsible to do like everything around the budgeting, to prepare the budgeting for the whole organization, which is a pretty big one in Greece. She was using Excel and she learned on her own how to use Excel and actually do the whole budgeting on Excel. She was creating forms on Excel to send to different places so she could collect data with, yeah, with doing like error corrections and stuff like that. And I was like, wow. I mean, we are talking about a person that's okay. She's my mother. so she's smart, of course. But regardless of that, if you think how this technology enabled a person who had zero knowledge of what a computer is to operate a whole organization, it's crazy. And we have to recognize that on Excel and on spreadsheets.

Yeah. And I think, yeah, it's just fascinating to hear. I think, you know, there are lots of, you know, people like to make distinctions between actual software and Excel. But when you think about technology as something that enables an individual and especially an individual to empower an organization, the lines become very gray, right? I mean, what is software from that standpoint? That's a fascinating story. All right. We are way over time for the prequel, but I will just tell our listeners, I'm not going to ask you another question because this is a

wormhole that we don't need to go down. But the other topic we discussed that is fascinating is that DropBase is building on top of Snowflake's infrastructure, right? So they're building software on top of Snowflake's data infrastructure. And that is a fascinating conversation. So if you're at all interested in that set of Snowflake, definitely tune in because it was really interesting to hear Jimmy talk to you about. Absolutely. And I think this episode is a testament to how many opportunities exist out there. Because we usually tend to look only on whatever the big marketing is talking about. But working with data in the market around the category is just huge. And I would recommend to everyone to listen to this episode.

It has some very interesting insights. It's a good one. Very thought-provoking. All right. Well, thanks for joining the prequel. You don't want to miss this episode. Lots of thought-provoking topics. And we'll catch you on the next one.